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The 800 year lag in CO2 after temperature – graphed

Carbon dioxide follows temperature in the Vostok Ice Cores

In the 1990′s the classic Vostok ice core graph showed temperature and carbon in lock step moving at the same time. It made sense to worry that carbon dioxide did influence temperature. But by 2003 new data came in and it was clear that carbon lagged behind temperature. The link was back to front. Temperatures appear to control carbon, and while it’s possible that carbon also influences temperature these ice cores don’t show much evidence of that. After temperatures rise, on average it takes 800 years before carbon starts to move. The extraordinary thing is that the lag is well accepted by climatologists, yet virtually unknown outside these circles. The fact that temperature leads is not controversial. It’s relevance is debated.

It’s impossible to see a lag of centuries on a graph that covers half a million years so I have regraphed the data from the original sources, here and here, and scaled the graphs out so that the lag is visible to the naked eye. What follows is the complete set from 420,000 years to 5,000 years before the present.

NOTE 1: What really matters here are the turning points, not the absolute levels.

NOTE 2: The carbon data is unfortunately far less detailed than the temperature data.
Beware of making conclusions about turning points
or lags when only one single point may be involved.

NOTE 3: The graph which illustrates the lag the best, and also has the most carbon data
is 150,000-100,000 years ago.

The bottom line is that rising temperatures cause carbon levels to rise. Carbon may still influence temperatures, but these ice cores are neutral on that. If both factors caused each other to rise significantly, positive feedback would become exponential. We’d see a runaway greenhouse effect. It hasn’t happened. Some other factor is more important than carbon dioxide, or carbon’s role is minor.

Permission for use: These images are available for media and non-profit use. As a courtesy please email me “joanne AT joannenova.com.au” (replace the ‘AT’ with ‘@’). Thank you. There are also larger files available in tif format for printing. Click on the link to the right hand side of each graph.

Note: The temperatures here are measured in relation to the present temperature. In other words, most of the time for the last million years it’s been much colder.

See Palisad for the most informative detailed graphics on what the Vostok and Dome Ice cores mean and why they strongly mathematically suggest CO2 follows temperatures and has little effect on them.This is what you need to see to understand “feedback” or the postulated “amplification”.

[...] is indeed not from a scientific source. Little bit of detective work shows that this is yet another blog post graph you are showing. It says that the graph has been "scaled" so that the lag is visible to [...]

[...] At least according to the valsock Ice core samplings.The opposite has historicly never occured. The 800 year lag – graphed « JoNova I have three questions. One; What heat event 600 to 800 years ago caused our current increases in [...]

[...] not like Lake Vostok was that important, it only provides a peek into 400,000 years of temperature and CO2 data. Scientists still disagree about what the data shows, which makes the Russian decision to pour [...]

[...] to watch, but it is worth noting the interviewer’s interesting perspective on the 800 year lag in the Vostok ice cores, who seems to think the heat and carbon record speak for themselves, and that the debate is over. [...]

The sequence of events during this Termination is fully consistent with CO2 participating in the latter 4200 years of the warming. The radiative forcing due to CO2 may serve as an amplifier of initial orbital forcing, which is then further amplified by fast atmospheric feedbacks (39) that are also at work for the presentday and future climate.

(The analysis of air bubbles from ice cores has yielded a precise record of atmospheric
greenhouse gas concentrations, but the timing of changes in these gases
with respect to temperature is not accurately known because of uncertainty in the
gas age–ice age difference. We have measured the isotopic composition of argon
in air bubbles in the Vostok core during Termination III (240,000 years before the
present). This record most likely reflects the temperature and accumulation change,
although the mechanism remains unclear. The sequence of events during Termination
III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by
800 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation.) CTS

(I posted the Abstract because it does not support your quote.Which is speculative and unsupported in the paper.Meanwhile the ABSTRACT make it clear that some other cause for the warming went on for many centuries,without the help of CO2.Realcimate make the same error as you do.Assume that magically after 800 years +/- 200 years of sleeping.It takes over the warming cause and go on from there.All without evidence that it happened that way.) CTS

Jo, you say that the CO2 lag is proof that CO2 is not a major driver of climate. When faced with the response of ‘C02 amplifies the warming’ you contend that this would result in a runaway greenhouse effect.
However, this is not the case. Positive feedback only progresses to infinity if the feedback is larger than the inputs. Given the positive feedback between temp:C02 is smaller than the input, you can find the theoretical end point of the cycle via limit theorem.

As for Cook, I don’t see what he has to do with my comment but he can defend himself if he cares to. I certainly don’t share all of his opinions.

Aha, you cracked it… Not. What you don’t get is that as the feedback becomes greater the stability is lower. That is the system starts to oscillate, there is no evidence of any oscillation in heating, Conveniently, the climate scientists use a scalar model which ignores time lags and presumes you can superpose all the feedback. Well I’d like to tell you and then that you can’t ignore the fact that individual feedbacks occur with different lags. The consensus position implies a feedback ratio of more than 0.9 for the positive feedbacks. That’s so close to unity it’s going to be unstable. Yet we see of course that climate is stable to less than 2 parts in 288 <1%. Remarkable stability for a system the ipcc tells us is on the verge of oscillation.

@CTS – would you mind posting in your own post rather than editing mine when it’s not necessary.

I am pointing out that scientists agree that during the interglacials, CO2 lagged temperature – it acted as a feedback and helped warm the planet more than would have been possible from the Milankovitch cycles alone.

This time the GHGs we emit are the initial force rather than the much slower solar forcing changes due to Milankovitch cycles.

(Since you bring up the interglacial periods.How come CO2 increase very slowly for thousands of years from the estimated 180 ppm to 280 ppm.While temperature several times changed radically for centuries of several degrees?

This present interglacial has been cooling for thousands of years now.The charts are right here in this blog:

Blimey / Brendon:
1. I have never said “the lag is proof that CO2 is not a GHG.” You can apologize for the misquote when what I did say is written on this very page. Perhaps you could read it?
2. I read Callion: He has no evidence in his paper to back up that statement you quote, it’s just pure speculation. That he said it rather proves that people have to write bland mindless caveats into their papers in order to get published.
3. Tristan: Just because John Cook reckons something is so doesn’t make it true. Indeed when I have bothered to debunk Cook, Cook had no reply, and didn’t apologize for all his errors, or his use of a flagrantly deceptive graph either.
4. Blimey, my moderators can write where ever they so choose. Get over it. If you lift your standards and quote me instead of attacking strawmen they won’t have the urge to write all over your sloppy comments eh?
5. Go on, both of you, find one paper that calculates climate sensitivity due to CO2 (ie.demonstrating the positive feedbacks) from the ice core data post 1999.

1. I have never said “the lag is proof that CO2 is not a GHG.” You can apologize for the misquote when what I did say is written on this very page. Perhaps you could read it?

I apologise. I’m glad you agree CO2 is a GHG and it has a warming effect. From the way you go on about the lag so much it appears as if you think CO2 does not have a warming effect. To the casual reader it looks almost as if you are intentionally misleading them.

[I have repeated that CO2 causes minor warming maybe 100 times on my blog. Only a religious reader could ignore that. JN]

2. I read Callion: He has no evidence in his paper to back up that statement you quote, it’s just pure speculation. That he said it rather proves that people have to write bland mindless caveats into their papers in order to get published.

And your peer-reviewed rebuttal can be found where exactly?

[I'm just stating the obvious. Go read Caillon and find the evidence within it that supports that speculative statement.
If a scientific paper said 2+2=5, (pace Keenan) I don't need to publish a peer reviewed paper to point out the flaw. JN]

What’s the term for cherry picking out only the small section of science that supports your own beliefs and ignoring the rest? Oh that’s right, it’s “cherry picking”.

[...Also known as IPCC standard procedure. JN]

I don’t mind dispensing with poor science, should it turn out to be that way, but you need to back up your claim with evidence, not just your own opinion.

[I did. See my commentary and graphs on this page. JN]

3. Tristan: Just because John Cook reckons something is so doesn’t make it true.

It’s the science Cook cites that’s important, and he doesn’t cherry pick just a piece of abstract.

[How is it cherry picking when I'm talking about his major conclusion, backed by the evidence in his paper? Do you think I'm supposed to reprint speculative caveats which have no data to back them up every time too? JN]

Indeed when I have bothered to debunk Cook, Cook had no reply, and didn’t apologize for all his errors, or his use of a flagrantly deceptive graph either.

I’ve not seen CO2Science correct their graph on ocean acidification either.

[So I gather you concede that Cook used a deceptive graph, perhaps unwittingly, but never disclosed that to his readers, or objected to it's use... JN]

4. Blimey, my moderators can write where ever they so choose. Get over it. If you lift your standards and quote me instead of attacking strawmen they won’t have the urge to write all over your sloppy comments eh?

CTS’s posting an abstract had nothing to do with my standard of comment.

I agree your moderators can and will write wherever they like. That doesn’t make it appropriate. The copy/paste of an abstract, without any comment from the moderator added nothing to this discussion. They would have been better to cite the abstract and explain their reasoning for the citation.

Doing so in a new post rather than editing my post will make this topic flow better.

5. Go on, both of you, find one paper that calculates climate sensitivity due to CO2 (ie.demonstrating the positive feedbacks) from the ice core data post 1999.

Really Jo? You’ve agreed that CO2 is a GHG (thus it traps heat – and you seem to agree on this although you’ve a slightly twisted concept of climate sensitivity -it’s not specific to CO2 but to any forcing. Perhaps your confused because it is quite often expressed as per doubling of CO2). You’ve also agreed that Temperature controlled CO2.

So when the temperature rises, the CO2 levels increase and therefore, because CO2 is a GHG then it causes even more heating. That’s a positive feedback.

I’m not sure why you wish to venture into climate sensitivity at this point, but here’s an answer for you anyway.

Tristan #20.2 Yes, exactly — What I said was nothing like what Blimey claimed. You’re sorry about that right?

As for Cook, you “me too’ed” 100% of Blimey’s proof (which was the Cook link and the speculative caveat). You own it too.

As for the “runaway” greenhouse effect. I realize that f < unity does not guarantee a runaway effect. But f = .65 (IPCC) is still so high in a multivariate system that it's inherently unstable. All it takes is a few other parameters to shift through their natural ranges and given a billion years, would go off the scale. No natural stable state has a positive feedback as wildly high as 0.65.

See my point 5 above. The Climate Scare has no paper to support their claims of amplification. It's speculation. Is it 0.1, or 0.65? Who knows, but based on the past 500 million years 0.65 is highly unlikely.

Actually Jo, the consensus position implies 0.65 – 0.7 loop gain, which is unstable enough. But that is the net loop gain. In gross terms we have known negative feedback of a factor of 0.2 delta T , but a tatal net gain of around 3 delta T , so that implies that the gross positive feedback = 15, which is a loop gain of 0.94 if I recall correctly. Since one of the biggest negative feedbacks is loss to space via the atmospheric window this result implies that anywhere radiation to space is retarded eg under a tree, runaway heating will occur. Absurd.

It’s a simple mistake, Any EE can tell you that you can’t superpose (add up ) feedbacks with different delays. The oscillations are caused by phase coincidences at delays the feedbacks reinforce not by the nett dc gain. This is why EEs use complex number math and Fourier transforms to characterise gain. Phase ( time delay ) is important.

Ultimately anyway, what the ipcc say implies positive feedback with feedback ratio of 0.94 which is impossible for a system that is stable to less than 2 degrees in 288 degrees.

Blimey / Brendan / whoeveryouare, you write so much inconsequential baseless stuff (see my inline replies above) that on those 1 in 100 comments when you write something that matters I do miss it.

Thanks for the papers, now to show that you have read them and know something about them and are not just here to waste my time, you can explain in your own words how they calculated climate sensitivity due to CO2 and whether it was empirical as I asked for, or just based on models that we know to be fatally flawed.

Of course, you have read the papers haven’t you? You aren’t just taking them on “faith”?

[I have repeated that CO2 causes minor warming maybe 100 times on my blog. Only a religious reader could ignore that. JN]

But once again you fail to quantify that amount, nor do you present any science to support your view. “Blogger science” is worthless.

Que? You misquoted me, apologized, and now expect me to quantify how many times you were wrong?

[I'm just stating the obvious. Go read Caillon and find the evidence within it that supports that speculative statement.
If a scientific paper said 2+2=5, (pace Keenan) I don't need to publish a peer reviewed paper to point out the flaw. JN]

Caillon is not stating that 2+2=5, Caillon states that CO2 is a feedback. This is not speculative, but based on the knowledge that CO2 is a GHG and that Temperature was causing CO2 levels to rise, both which you agreed.

This means CO2 was acting as a positive feedback. For you to state that you no longer wish to agree with Caillon on this point is like having a logical disagreement with yourself.

OK, you admit you can’t find any evidence in the Caillon paper to back up his statements on feedback.

Idso quotes 1100 studies to show that acidification is not the guaranteed disaster that it’s made out to be, and you find one study of the 1100 that says that one of the many species that benefit from more CO2 is an algae? That’s it? And many of the other papers you find quote damage at very low pH’s, which will not occur in the next 3000 years.

[Thanks. I'll reply to that in a comment when I have time to look at it. But I must say I'll be amazed if it's not just another model guesstimate. JN]

Where can I find your method of determining climate sentivity? How do YOU calculate a projection for comparison against empirical data?

Thanks for the papers, now to show that you have read them and know something about them and are not just here to waste my time, you can explain in your own words how they calculated climate sensitivity due to CO2 and whether it was empirical as I asked for, or just based on models that we know to be fatally flawed.

Oh a tangent question not in the least bit connected to why CO2 is a feedback – FWIW …

No. not a tangent. That is the whole point. You claim the climate sensitivity is high, but you can’t name any empirical evidence to back it up.

No Jo, I’m not a climate scientist and whilst I can follow the basics I am quite happy to admit that the more advanced workings are beyond my current understanding. But that’s the difference between you and I. I’m an expert in a completely different field and I will concede that the experts in the field of climatology know a lot more about it than I do. Another difference between you and I is that acccept all of the science unless new science shows it to be flawed. And that science MUST come from the peer-reviewed process, whilst not perfect, it’s certainly much better than making crap up and posting it on a blogger website.

I will also take this opportunity to once again point out they even I with my limited knowledge know that you are wrong when you say … “Climate sensitivity refers to carbon dioxide’s effect on the climate.”. Whilst often expressed per doubling of CO2, climate sensitivity is the temperature response to a given amount of radiative forcing, no matter what the source of forcing.

Hence you can even estimate the climate sensitivity from ice cores where the solar forcing drove the change.

Of course, you have read the papers haven’t you? You aren’t just taking them on “faith”?

People that have spent many years studying the science in one area are generally much better at it than some blogger on the internet. Especially when that blogger is easily exposed for their cherry picking methods and lack of understand in even something so basic as the definition of climate sensitivity.

Yeah, I’ll accept the scientific consensus on matters that are beyond my own understanding every single time.

sorry to comment on such a old post, but I saw this comment and had to respond.

Yeah, I’ll accept the scientific consensus on matters that are beyond my own understanding every single time.

Popular beliefs in history found to be incorrect:
– The existence of witches, that resulted in ~200,000 or more “witches” were tortured, burnt or hanged in the Western world from 1500 until around 1800.
– Ulcers are caused by stress. Actually found to be a bacterial infection.
– Flat Earth, To my amazement people still believe this. But the proof states otherwise.

Also, if this issue is beyond your understanding why do you advocate one way or another?
“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Strength to Love, 1963 – Martin Luther King.

I’m not a climate scientist and whilst I can follow the basics I am quite happy to admit that the more advanced workings are beyond my current understanding.

So you concede you take those papers on “faith” and can’t explain how they calculated climate sensitivity. (I looked btw, and they are based on models.)

Estimating climate sensitivity based on ice cores is problematic in any case, as Lindzen and others are now pointing out. We can’t calculate the climate sensitivity when the time-frame for equilibrum conditions is so much shorter than the data points. Lindzen and spencer are analyzing “months”. The ice core data is hundreds of years between CO2 points.

Yawn, In the end, basically I’m “wrong” because I’m a blogger. It doesn’t matter how much evidence I cite, nor the impeccable logic I speak, nor that I quote experts. If I was a certified expert, you’d know I was right, even if I disagreed with other certified experts (and they’d be right too, of course).
What a bog-of-confusion.

It’s known as argument from authority, and there is no point continuing the conversation. There is nothing I could say that would change your mind. You are stuck in the stone age logic of pandering to your chosen Gods.

I’ve added in a few inline comments above, some of the non-sequiteurs are not worth cut and pasting. They don’t make sense even in context.

Blimey/Brendan/anonymous fan, we did this to death. You accuse me of not explaining every caveat in a headline, even though I got the text right.

No I accused you of cherry picking. You accept only the science that supports your preconceived opinion and you reject out of hand anything you disagree with, even when it is pointed out that you never supply evidence to support your position.

except for hundreds of posts when I do. See “evidence” in the site index. See also “New Here”, The Skeptics Handbook I and II.

[snip off topic]

[snip baby-like bluster without any reference or substantiation].

Idso quotes 1100 studies to show that acidification is not the guaranteed disaster that it’s made out to be, and you find one study of the 1100 that says that one of the many species that benefit from more CO2 is an algae? That’s it? And many of the other papers you find quote damage at very low pH’s, which will not occur in the next 3000 years.

No, I picked out the most obvious one to demonstrate why Idso’s shallow analysis method is flawed.

No. not a tangent. That is the whole point. You claim the climate sensitivity is high, but you can’t name any empirical evidence to back it up.

Gosh it’s remarkable that you write this and COMPLETELY IGNORE THE LINK GIVEN WHICH SHOWS THE CALCULATION BASED ON EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.

This is what I mean by incoherent. Which link? What paper? What evidence? See below in my comment.

[snip baseless repetition]

So you concede you take those papers on “faith” and can’t explain how they calculated climate sensitivity.

(I looked btw, and they are based on models.)

[snip bluster]

We can use this empirically derived climate sensitivity to predict the temperature rise from a forcing of 4 W/m2, arising from a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels. The result is a predicted temperature increase of 3 °C.

Estimating climate sensitivity based on ice cores is problematic in any case, as Lindzen and others are now pointing out.

It’s always been problematic. But that begs the question, how do you know it’s low or is this just more of your wishful thinking without evidence?

We can’t calculate the climate sensitivity when the time-frame for equilibrum conditions is so much shorter than the data points. Lindzen and spencer are analyzing “months”. The ice core data is hundreds of years between CO2 points.

Transient sensitivity is defined as 20 years and even that’s lower and shorter than equilibrium conditions. I suggest you try again Nova, perhaps after you understand the definition.

[Which agrees with my point. The data from ice cores doesn't have the resolution even if it is a 20 year "equilibrium. ]

Yawn, In the end, basically I’m “wrong” because I’m a blogger.

No, you seem to be wrong because you fail to look at ALL of the evidence.

You are wrong because you cherry pick only the small sections of data that agree with your viewpoint and ignore all other science that shows the planet is warming.

You are not right simply because you state something. You need to follow that up with evidence. Scientific evidence.

To Anonymous ——, site policy is that we simply don’t have the time to edit comments. Nor do we normally allow someone who repeatedly breaks laws of reason to comment. You’ve admitted you use argument from authority as your main “analysis tool”.

Obviously, whoever is writing the Blimey stuff fails that logic bar, and self-editing requirement completely. I should have kept the ban on (he’s been blocked once as “Brendan” and using two identities is another reason to ban). But since sometimes he posts a link to an interesting paper I allowed him, it, her, them, to post, just in case he could point to another interesting paper. Silly me.

It’s easy to waste a bloggers time. Blimey tactics:
1. Post long link-filled comments, where most of the sentences are written in condescending smug bombastic terms, often incoherent too.
2. Post links to papers he doesn’t understand and can’t explain or discuss the evidence. But then claim unscientifically, that they must be right, they are peer reviewed, and from an expert. This guarantees no real scientific dialogue is possible. He has an infinite number of irrelevant, flawed, incomplete, out of date papers to draw on, and no need to read them first.
3. Accuse me of deceiving people but hypocritically get huffy when I point out he writes in an incoherent style. He expects me to ask for “clarification”, but he’s free to invent insults.
4. Demand I justify points which I’ve blogged on repeatedly but who are too lazy to use my index. (See “evidence”, and “New Here?”)
5. Invent strawmen. eg “Like the way you contradict yourself on CO2 being a feedback. Ooops!”
6. React with faux indignation at non-points, ie defending his anonymous pseudonym.
7. Go off topic,
8. Repeat steps 1 – 7 ad nauseum.

No I don’t have time to get into long conversations with anonymous time wasters.

For the Record:

The Idso rebuttals he quoted are an fallacious ad hom, they are:
1/ about Craig Idso’s father
2/ written about different papers to the ones I quote on another topic.
3/ Was rebutted and updated years ago by Sherwood Idso (as it happens)

He/she/it discounts all of one man’s work based on attacks on his father. Then cherry picks papers (the idso rebuttal was from the same edition of the journal he quotes above, but he didn’t list it), and accuse me of cherry picking. (I prefer the UAH series BTW because 1 it agrees with the radiosondes best in the Upper T, 2/ the other satellite series RSS is known to have a slight warm bias, 3/ Giss et al uses ground stations are near airports and tarmacs.)

The single point in his long comment that relates to the original post, and the evidence, is a repeat assertion about “a paper” (as usual, he don’t tell us which paper, just refer to “one of the links” above) said this:

“We can use this empirically derived climate sensitivity to predict the temperature rise from a forcing of 4 W/m2, arising from a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels. The result is a predicted temperature increase of 3 °C.”

I did read all the papers he suggested in a comment above — Hansen 2008, Royer 2007, Chylek 2008. Royer and Chylek are models as I expected. If he meant Hansen 2008? – he didn’t read it — Hansens aim to “verify” models with paleo data. It’s the “best” but horribly confounded, very circular, and demonstrates nothing. That’s why even Hansen didn’t get excited about this paper.
It doesn’t have the resolution to test cause and effect. They assume a climate sensitivity of 3/4°C per W/m2 and then use models to calculate a global temperature scale, which not surprisingly fits the known pattern, which proves nothing. With a flawed model, and sea levels (at a resolution of a few thousands years) they can produce a graph a lot like “the real one”. But temperatures drive the CO2 curve, and they also drive sea levels. It’s just not possible to extract the climate sensitivity from that confounded mix.

The neolithic unscientific reasoning “by authority”, and ad homs don’t meet the standards of logic for commenters here. For the minimal benefit of dubious papers he brings, he requires too much editing.

No more from Brendan-blimey. I’ll go back to unpacking people with real names, who write material coherent enough to be published by real news sources.

Jo

The Evidence:

The repeated request for evidence from someone too lazy to look before scoffing with fake zeal: From the New Here page:

there is no empirical (by observation) evidence that net feedbacks (mostly clouds and humidity) will amplify the warming in the long run.
Humidity will rise, sure, but it can rain out or form low clouds. This is what the trillion dollar bet is about. Will humidity hang around and thicken the “blanket”, or not? While the simulations say “yes”, the observations say “No”. Measurements of satellites, cloud cover changes, 3,000 ocean bouys, 6,000 boreholes, and 28 million weather balloons looking at temperature or humidity can’t find the warming that the models predict. The heat is not in the upper troposphere (the hot spot is missing) and, importantly, while ocean heat has been rising for decades, it isn’t rising fast enough. There is no hidden heat accumulating there.

PS: Seriously Blimey– it’s been nice, and I’m flattered and all — wish I had the time to keep helping you with the basics of logic and sentence construction, but I have to get back to writing about people who have reputations that matter. I do hope you graduate to a real name one day. You have potential.

[...] current evidence is equivocal because of the low accuracy of the measurements, but, as has been recently shown by Joanne Nova , the Vostok and Law Dome ice cores show that the temperature rises before the atmospheric [...]

Are these people for real? Well they are welcome to join John Cook and Tim Flummery et.al feeding –it and CO2 to my Rose’s and veggies they grow so much better.Climate Change is Natural and CO2 is life.We live in a beautiful ever changing World,stop moaning and enjoy it.

[...] ages.The current evidence is equivocal because of the low accuracy of the measurements, but, as has been recently shown by Joanne Nova , the Vostok and Law Dome ice cores show that the temperature rises before the atmospheric [...]

[...] ages. The current evidence is equivocal because of the low accuracy of the measurements, but, as has been recently shown by Joanne Nova , the Vostok and Law Dome ice cores show that the temperature rises before the atmospheric carbon [...]

[...] questioning whether it will really make you happy. Oh the dilemma of the tree hugger………. The ice cores tell us Co2 follows temperature by hundreds of years, therefore logically the rise in Co2 is a result of warming, not a cause. Tree rings are a circus, [...]

While many of us humans have got a lot to answer for, I think my government and the media are picking the arguments that suit them and then using them to exaggerate the extent of our initial influence on the atmosphere. My biggest concern is what those in government say are our duties and responsibilities to somehow slow or stop or reverse(?!!!) the climatic variations by paying a new carbon tax.

I saw this lag of temperature increase with my students – years ago and it fascinated us then. Initially counter-intuitive, we then accepted that the mechanisms are more complex than we ever imagined. While we’re not fearful, we ARE fascinated. Milankovitch is a bit of a hero.

Could you please direct me to other blogs that have got this debate going?

To the real point of this post: I just read a news article that states: “The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has broken above 400 parts per million for the first time in three million year(sic),indicating a record level for greenhouse gases.”

If Vostok ice core data looks at the last 400,000 years or so, where is the data obtained for the 2,600,000 years before that?

The climate scientist Waleed Abdalati mentions this lag and points out that the increase in temps happens much faster than the cooling events, an indication that the greenhouse gas slows the cooling part of the Milankovitch cycle.

The interesting part of the Vostok ice core is not the increase in temperature from a glaciation to an interglacial. The opposite period is far more interesting.

Have a look at the 150-100 kyear period:

During the warming 135-130 kyear, there is a huge overlap between temperature increase and CO2 increase. That allows the modellers to include an important influence from CO2 on temperature.
But in the period 125-115 kyears, temperatures (and CH4 levels) go down until a new minimum (and land ice to a new maximum), while CO2 levels remain high. When CO2 levels ultimately go down with ~40 ppmv, there is no discernable influence on temperature (or ice sheet formation). That points to a low response of temperature to CO2 levels…

[...] 6 – The Vostok Ice Core Data shows we’ve seen temperatures and CO2 levels like this before and more importantly, CO2 levels follow temperature changes (not the other way around) – see here. [...]

Has anyone factored in the effect of the latent heat of fusion? Clearly to melt so much ice there has to be huge heat input without any rise in temperature. Once a dynamic equilibrium has been reached, continued heat input will cause a temperature increase. Clearly in previous interglacial cycles there was little to zero human impact. With the current latter stage of a warming cycle it appears that humans may well have increased concentrations of carbon dioxide but surely it is not proven that this is causing catastrophic results

[...] provide a link to debunk perhaps the most important image in the history of global warmism, Al Gore’s Ice Core chart. Recall how important this was in forming the myth? Note that, it turned out the rise in CO2 [...]

So uh, where’s your graph that tells us what will happen when the CO2 hits 400? And 500? And 600? Where’s your graph that tells us what the temperature will be when atmospheric soot and sulfer dioxide and methane doubles from our present amounts. Let’s see, we’ve added a whole bunch of shit in the last 100 years. We should be able to double that in say only another 50 years. Where’s your graph that tells us this has no effect on temperature? Where’s your graph that shows that all this shit follows temperature and not the other way around? Where’s your graph that shows what happens when somebody dumps 300 ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere before any of the natural processes are even anywhere near the required conditions for releasing CO2?
["Whole bunch of shit" is exactly how much?] ED

Quite a bit. Enough that vision is greatly diminished. Sunlight amount reaching Earth is greatly diminished. Enough that a brown haze is visible over the entire globe and there are pockets where that brown haze is easily visible from space. In other words a huge pile of shit that no present plant or animal has ever had to deal with. At least not in a time frame that is meaningful to a Homo Sapien. And certainly not any doubling of these amounts. Exactly when do you want to say enough is enough? Or is it always a dictum that if lots is good then more should be just about right? We are already in uncharted territory. To continue on this path is suicidal.

This of course brings up the next point. I have never been able to understand the purpose of relating present conditions to conditions we think may have existed 65 million years ago. 65 million years? There is nothing to suggest man would survive even one single glaciation cycle (because he hasn’t), much less the changes recorded during a 65 million year period. Or any alternate climates within those 65 million years. And by all accounts considering the care he feels for this planet and the abuse heaped on those idiotic tree huggers, I would have to say he will never make even that one single cycle. 65 million years is just a nebulous dream. There is not any indication that he would survive outside the climatic conditions in which he developed. The neanderthal became extinct and he was more robust and had a bigger brain than ours. Our present course of action does not engender much hope. Being arrogant and conceited and certain of our chances are not character traits the forces of nature has much regard for. IMO

Replicant, I have good news for you. For 90% of man’s existence it’s been an ice age (aka a glaciation cycle). Somehow, without electricity, we survived.

But if you are worried about real pollution. Join the club. The biggest obstacles to cleaning up real pollution is an ignorant religious fixation on fake pollution. What we need is real science, with real observations. Join us in fighting pollution, start using logic, reason, and empirical evidence. Help the world instead of hurting it…

“Are these people for real? Well they are welcome to join John Cook and Tim Flummery et.al feeding –it and CO2 to my Rose’s and veggies they grow so much better.Climate Change is Natural and CO2 is life.”

- more is better. There is nothing natural about anything in our present human world, and that includes CO2 levels. CO2 levels at 400 ppm is anything but natural. Especially when there does not exist any sign on the horizon that some attempt might arrive to halt further increases since there is no indication that I can see that there will be any attempts to curtail our present activity. It is impossible to ignore CO2 and curtail only ‘real pollution’. Curtail real pollution then. Stop the oil sands project in Alberta. That will definitely have an effect on CO2 emissions. If man is to survive every single person must become tree hugger. There are absolutely no alternatives. What do you think the chances are of that happening?

“The biggest obstacles to cleaning up real pollution is an ignorant religious fixation on fake pollution.” I don’t believe this is correct. I believe the biggest obstacle is a religious fixation that we can have our cake and eat it too. That we can drive our cars because CO2 doesn’t matter. I believe that statement reflects a concern about something that doesn’t matter.

Thank you for letting me speak my piece. That was very generous of you.

Fake pollution obviously is the kind that does not harm us or the environment. The observational evidence suggests CO2 will warm the planet by about 1/6th of what the IPCC suggests. That will likely be beneficial. It already feeds about 5% of the world, and is greening the deserts.

I believe the biggest obstacle is a religious fixation that we can have our cake and eat it too.

[...] is mostly responsible for the increase in CO2 levels. This means temperature (heat) increases BEFORE CO2 not the other way around as we are told every day. If that is the case, then trying to lower our [...]

The ice gore graph designated as covering a period of 50,000 years to 2500 years is confusing for the reason that it supposedly covers a period starting 2500 years ago, as labeled, but the 5000 year graduations indicate that it starts at year zero because there is no 2500 year graduation. How can this be explained? Is the 2500 year label wrong, or is the graduation in error?

The temperatures shown by the graph seem to be in agreement with those starting at year zero.

————-REPLY: The temperature data continues to the last century. The CO2 data stops 2500 years ago. -Jo

[...] not one of those folks who loses sleep over CO2 emissions, given the fact rising CO2 has typically followed global warming in our Earth’s history, not pr…, but for those who do fret, the latest EIA data ought to be reassuring. We’ve been lowering [...]

The Australian Government’s Climate Change department has admitted that C02 rises follow increases in temperature, with a lag of about 800 years. This is the opposite of what Al Gore proposed in his infamous “An Inconvenient Truth” video. Search http://www.climatechange.gov.au/accurate-answers-professor-ian-plimer.
On page 32 of the .pdf: Ice core studies have shown that during past ice ages CO2 levels only started to rise about 800 years after the initial temperature increase. This is because it takes about 800 years for ocean processes to transfer the initial temperature rise to an increase in atmospheric CO2.
From the horse’s mouth.

Unfortunately Brian, they can’t limit themselves to stating the truth. They found it necessary to contradict the previous evidence with; “This release of CO2 as the oceans warm then results in further warming”, thus reversing cause and effect.

[...] And lastly, in order to swallow the fear inspired by the headline, we must pay no attention to the scientific evidence that CO2 levels have historically lagged behind corresponding changes in [...]

Great information, links and graphs guys, thanks !
There seems to be a lot of talk but little science out there at the moment, it feels a bit like the salem witch trials hysteria.
Perhaps that’s the psychology it gives everyone the chance to have an opinion when the evidence is kind of woolly.
Also if people were NOT worried about climate change you might never have the time spent on earth sciences.

Has anyone come up with a model which incorporates all of the known effects, such as Milankovich cycles, Solar output/Maunder minimum stuff, and various meteorological feedback circuits – or maybe that’s what everyone is trying to do ?

What would be the cause of the observed 5 million year cooling trend ?

At one point the BBC UK Radio put out a statement something like ‘part of the UK has now recorded the highest temperature ever expreienced’ – without even bothering the caveat “in recorded history”. So completely misleading it has driven me to internet research!

[...] This is absolutely true, but what they do not often recognize is the increases in temperature generally precede the measurable increases in CO2 by about 800 years. This seems to indicate the increase in temperature might cause the increase in CO2, not the other [...]

The temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans are influenced by the sun and geothermal The radiated thermal energy from the sun is proportional to the sun’s surface temperature to the fourth power. Atmospheric temp gain, 6000=0 C;6050=1.18 C;6100=2.39 C. Ocean temp increase causes liberation of CO2 and CH4 Methane. CO2 + CH4 = 2C + 2H2O This reaction is ongoing, slightly exothermic and feasible over a very wide temperature range. Coal , diamonds and oceans came from this reaction and continues. CO2 may be eliminated from flue gas stream from gas fired power stations. CO2 may be partially eliminated from coal fired power station flue gasses. Man’s releases of CO2 have minimal effect on global temperatures but a huge effect on money stolen from citizens.

[You're commenting in a very old thread dating from 2009. I'll approve this but I don't know if any readers will see it.] AZ

Love it. CO2 lag makes sense. World covered with ICE not a lot going on. Sun (gotta be doesn’t it) fires up, Ice starts to melt, Oceans start to pour out CO2 (as they are wont to do ) that sort of change takes a little while. CO2 feeds plants, plants feed animals etc and provided the big glowey thing in the sky keeps pumping energy in the planet is away. If it were the other way around….CO2 causing planet to heat up….where does the CO2 come from ? ? ? What STOPPED the heat to cause the Ice Age….a lack of CO2? ? ? or the sun went quiet!!!!

this lag [[snip] idea] completely ignores the impact of methane, which drops out of the atmosphere fairly quick

co2 increasing starts global warming triggering methane from cold waters which accelerates global warming, the methane drops out after a few decades leaving co2, much slower behind, so temps drop with the impact of methane gone and co2 much slower to calm down

[...] who realise that this greatly weakens the warmist narrative. For example, Jo Nova had a post called The 800 year lag in CO2 after temperature – graphed [2], where she recognised and graphed a general time lag of several hundred years between CO2 and [...]

This illustrates the misleading policy that concerns the right information to the citizen. The key point is that the AGW hypothesis (Anthropogenic Global Warming, Human-induced catastrophic warming) in the political policy is unfair as a proven fact is assumed and that, therefore, this conclusion (selectively) is "reasoned" or not by the media. Everything is being used to frame the illusion of a human-induced catastrophic global warming, like brainwashing, with the aim of keeping the Eco Industrial Complex's earnings model up. Capitalism in the vision of the left, but here seems to be a Faustish pact with the devil. All the practice of science has been sought by this pact and has led to ignoring facts. After all, the climate models of the IPCC have overestimated the warming up. The causal link between CO2 change as a cause of temperature change is far to be sought. Rather, the opposite is true. See here. {link lost in translation}] [Fly]

[I'm also dubious about the Google translation. I might get the translation checked but that's not possible right now.] AZ

[...] ignored the empirical evidence. They managed to ignore the facts and have done so to this day. Joanne Nova explains part of the reason they were able to fool the majority in her article, “The 800 year lag [...]

Historically, yes, rise in CO2 concentration follows rise in global temperature. However, the relation goes both ways. It is scientifically proven that the exponential rise in CO2 concentration, due to human activity since the industrial revolution of the 18th century, causes rising of global temperature. (The enhanced steam motor was invented by James Watt in 1769.)

“We use a newly developed technique that is based on the information flow concept to investigate the causal structure between the global radiative forcing and the annual global mean surface temperature anomalies (GMTA) since 1850. Our study unambiguously shows one-way causality between the total Greenhouse Gases and GMTA. Specifically, it is confirmed that the former, especially CO2, are the main causal drivers of the recent warming. [...] On paleoclimate time scales, however, the cause-effect direction is reversed: temperature changes cause subsequent CO2/CH4 changes.”

It does not show what it claims though.
1. Firstly, it uses HadCRUT — see John McLeans work on how this dataset is missing huge amounts of data before 1950, has inexplicable adjustments, is unchecked for basic errors like boats being on land, and thermometers being F not C.
2. Thanks to the false ratchet-up of site move adjustments, plus UHI, if there is a correlation between temperatures rising and CO2 output it is hardly a surprise. More airports, more airconditioners near thermometers is the obvious cause of “global warming”.
3. The paper itself says that there is no correlation between CO2 and temps in the icecores. ie no evidence at all of CO2 feedbacks — (which are larger than the direct effect of CO2.) That’s quite significant!

However on very long time scales (800,000 years) the IF is only significant in the direction from air temperature to CO2. This supports the idea that the feedback of GHGs to temperature changes seems to be much slower than the fast response of temperature to changes in GHGs48.

“Slower” meaning “lower” when we are talking about an effect that didn’t show in 800,000 years.

And this — anthropogenic forcings is “basic physics” so why does it have “differing effects”?

The spatial explicit analysis strongly indicates that the increasing anthropogenic forcing is causing very differing effects regionally with some regions in the southern hemisphere showing large IF values. Regions of significant IF do coincide with regions having stronger than average recent warming trends.

4. The study obviously doesn’t consider that solar effects (ie. perhaps through solar wind, UV/IR changes, and the solar magnetic field) have a far higher correlation with global temperatures than CO2 does. Hence it found a spurious correlation and confirms it against broken models that are known failures.